Economics Commons^™

Precarious Labor In Covid Times: The Case Of Musicians, David M. Arditi

Fast Capitalism

The coronavirus pandemic changed the way we think about work, the economy, and our everyday lives as governments shutdown all but the most essential public spaces. Workers who earn a living through precarious employment have faced unique barriers to securing wages. The impact of the pandemic shutdown was especially devastating on musicians' lives and many supporting workers in the entertainment industry. The structural insecurity of gig work became amplified as venues were forced to stop performances for a year or more. In this paper, I argue the current phase of capitalism that depends on precarious labor and unending consumption destroys …

Latino Or Hispanic-Owned Businesses In The Mountain West, 2017-2022, Anthony Arroyo, Cason Noll, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines the growth of Latino or Hispanic-owned businesses in the largest metropolitan areas in the Mountain West between 2017 and 2022. The data are derived from the Brookings Institution’s “Charting the surge in Latino or Hispanic-owned businesses in the US” report, which highlights data on Latino or Hispanic-owned businesses in metropolitan and micropolitan areas across all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. This fact sheet focuses on data for the following metropolitan areas in the Mountain West: Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ; Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO; Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV; Albuquerque, NM; and Salt Lake City-Murray, UT.

Best Metros For Manufacturing In The Mountain West, 2024, Taylor Volk, Sean Curry, Mohit Pande, Anirudh Polagani, Kristian Thymianos, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Transportation & Infrastructure

This fact sheet examines data on the top U.S. metros for manufacturing across four Mountain West states (Arizona, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada). The original report, titled “Best Metros for Manufacturing in the U.S.” by Commercial Search includes data on the top 100 U.S. metros for manufacturing.

Cash Or Credit: A Collection Of Short Essays About Economic Philosophy And The Trajectory Of Political Economy, Jackson C. Dusart

Student Publications

From John Locke to Herbert Marcuse, discussions about economics and societies have dominated the philosophical battleground. While Adam Smith waged a war against mercantilism, men like Karl Marx and John Stuart Mill, two ideological enemies, were both writing to address the same problems they saw in society. Each one of these men has contributed to a different part of the discussion. In understanding their differences, and their common ground, these essays examine a hypothetical four-hundred-dollar jacket, stolen from the author at Gettysburg College. Each one of these philosophers, each writing at different times and in different circumstances, will attempt to …

Marshaling A Triumph: The Park Chung Hee Era, Developmental State Theory, And The Meaning Of Success In South Korea, Kevin Hockmuth

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

South Korea has long been looked to as a model of developmental success. Undoubtedly, South Korean society has experienced a remarkable expansion of wealth, social well-being, and technological capacity over the last half-century. The central turning point in this momentous transformation coincided with the authoritarian rule of Park Chung Hee (1961-1979). As such, scholars of political economy and development have paid close attention to the various facets of his regime to glean the primary causes underpinning South Korea’s developmental feats. The most significant of these efforts have emerged from works emphasizing the role of the South Korean developmental state. This …

Starbucks Workers United And The Future Of American Labor Activism, Sophia Drake Braymen

Honors Projects

This essay explores the goals, motivations, and methods of Starbucks Workers United (the campaign of the labor union Workers United that is aimed at organizing Starbucks employees), as well as the Starbucks Company’s response to it. The analysis is informed by the author’s interviews with both a Workers United organizer and a Starbucks corporate employee. This essay explores the position of Starbucks Workers United within the broader history of American labor activism and our current epoch of union decline, as well as what the recent breakthrough in cooperation between Workers United and Starbucks means for American workers going into the …

Atelier Interloper, Isabel Jane Marvel

Masters Theses

Architects frequently specify toxic materials, like fiberglass insulation, for construction projects, materials they would never touch with bare hands, let alone wear as garments. So why incorporate such harmful substances into our buildings? Atelier Interloper, a nimble fabrication studio, intervenes in job sites and manufacturer waste streams, reclaiming industrial materials that are no longer usable at building scale but are suitable for clothing. The premier collection of garments draws inspiration from workwear and is crafted from industrial materials such as Tyvek and 100% recycled denim insulation. In outfitting the body with these materials, this thesis work brings visibility to substances …

Beyond Ease Of Doing Business: The Impact Of Digital Integration On Economic Growth In The Arab World, Amale El Maiss

BAU Journal - Creative Sustainable Development

The Digital Quality of Business Index is an innovative tool for assessing the impact of digital transformation on economic growth in the Arab world, it has been introduced as part of this research. The DQOB index combines other critical elements to the ease of doing business, such as the Human Development Index (HDI), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and E-Government initiatives, unlike traditional metrics that focus solely on ease of doing business. The study reveals exceptional findings, based on analysis of panel data from 2004 to 2022 in a selection of countries across the Middle East using both fixed and unpredictable …

The Safety Net Should Work For Working Age Adults, Lauren Bauer

Brookings Scholar Lecture Series

This lecture focuses attention on a population that is ill-served by the safety net but rarely acknowledged: low-income, working-age adults without dependents or government-determined disabilities. In this lecture, Brookings Scholar Lauren Bauer, a former Special Assistant in the Office of the Secretary at the US Department of Education, argues that a safety net that is inaccessible to ABAWDs (able-bodied adults without dependents) fails to recognize the precarious state of the low-wage labor market or how safety-net programs allow these workers to remain in the workforce. By modernizing the parameters of who qualifies for access to safety-net programs, assistance can be …

Post Covid-19 Recovery In Mountain West Metros, Zachary Walusek, Vanessa Booth, Annie Vong, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines data on the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and recession on Mountain West metros. The original report includes data on economic activity, labor market, and real estate trends.

No Ela Without Ella: Understanding The Naming And Crafting Of Gendered Subjectivities In Puerto Rico, Carmín Quijano Seda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the beginning of the 20th century, the official metadiscourses about gendered job titles sedimented the idea that names or indexes pointing to women should be interpreted as unskilled, cheap, or even free labor in Puerto Rico (Azize, 1985; Muñiz Mas, 1998; Baerga-Santini, 1999). For this reason, Puerto Rican women organized and fought for equality in work settings. Furthermore, they became more active in politics and the government. Nevertheless, the Estado Libre Asociado (ELA) and local media discourses and interpretations about women’s labor discouraged them from participating in more senior positions (Acevedo Gaud, 2012).

However, this interpretation seemed to have …

Part 1: As Good As It Gets? The Economy Of Hampton Roads, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Region Reports: Hampton Roads

Hampton Roads’ economy was a study in contrasts in 2024. For the first time in almost two decades, the regional economy grew in four consecutive years. A record number of individuals were in the civilian labor force and employed, and employers reported a record number of jobs. Job growth, however, lagged our peers. Now is the time to invest in key industry clusters to spur private-sector job growth in the region and build upon our recent economic fortunes.

Religion And Growth, Sascha O. Becker, Jared Rubin, Ludger Woessmann

ESI Working Papers

We use the elements of a macroeconomic production function—physical capital, human capital, labor, and technology—together with standard growth models to frame the role of religion in economic growth. Unifying a growing literature, we argue that religion can enhance or impinge upon economic growth through all four elements because it shapes individual preferences, societal norms, and institutions. Religion affects physical capital accumulation by influencing thrift and financial development. It affects human capital through both religious and secular education. It affects population and labor by influencing work effort, fertility, and the demographic transition. And it affects total factor productivity by constraining or …

Essays On Human Capital, Labor, And Gender, Kritika Sen Chakraborty

Economics ETDs

This dissertation is a collection of chapters that demonstrate the factors affecting human capital and labor market outcomes of adolescents and the gender differences in the quality of employment of adults in South Africa.

The second chapter evaluates the impact of South Africa’s Child Support Grant, an unconditional means-tested grant provided to age-eligible children, on adolescent nutrition outcomes. The findings suggest that welfare programs can alleviate extreme undernutrition and overnutrition among females during the critical growth period of adolescence.

In the third chapter, I use longitudinal data from rural South Africa linked with geospatial climate indicators to examine the effect …

The Future Of Roe And The Gender Pay Gap: An Empirical Assessment, Itay Ravid, Jonathan Zandberg

Indiana Law Journal

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court upheld a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after the fifteenth week of pregnancy and overruled the holding in Roe v. Wade. Among the many arguments raised in Dobbs in an attempt to overturn Roe, the State of Mississippi argued that due to “the march of progress” in women’s role in society, abortion rights are no longer necessary for women to participate equally in economic life. It has also been argued that there is no empirical support to the relationship between abortion rights and women’s economic success in society. …

Grabbing The Paycheck: A Glimpse Into The Modern Economic Livelihoods Of Xe Máy Grab Drivers In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Maddie Davis

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Woven into the very fabric of urban life in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam is commuting via motorcycle (Vietnamese: xe máy). The versatility of xe máy can be witnessed in the surge of rush hour traffic, the shipment of a great variety and quantity of goods, and the crunch of people in order to get the whole family atop a single bike. Due to xe máy as the primary way much of the population gets around, Ho Chi Minh City’s transportation infrastructure and traffic patterns are highly conducive to this method of transit. Resulting from these favorable conditions, a multitude …

Part 5: Virginia's Hotel Industry Grows, But Change Is Coming, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

This chapter assesses the performance of the hotel industry in the Commonwealth and discusses the challenges facing the hotel industry in 2024 and beyond. To understand the prospects for growth, we examine the recovery from the shock of 2020 and how different areas of the commonwealth fared with regard to hotel revenue and occupancy. We take stock of the competitive environment and how labor shortages continue to challenge hoteliers. We ask: what does the future hold for the hotel industry in Virginia?

Part 1: Virginia's Economy Grows, But Questions Linger About The Future, Dragas Center For Economic Analysis And Policy, Old Dominion University

State of the Commonwealth Reports

There is good news to report about the economy of the Commonwealth. Economic activity increased in 2022 and 2023. A record number of Virginians were at work or looking for work. Labor force participation increased above pre-pandemic levels. However, this news is tempered by the fact that Virginia grew slower than the nation and Virginians continue to migrate out of the Commonwealth. The Virginia economy should grow in 2024, but work remains to be done to match the economic performance of our peers.

Semiparametric Distributional And Quantile Models Applications In Health, Labor And Banking, Li Lu

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The first chapter study the medical expenditure on prescription drug utilization on racial/ethnic disparities using a partially linear quantile treatment effects (QTE) model. We consider the quantile treatment effect inequity from race conditional on other covariates. We find that people tend to spend more depending on prescription drug use as growing old, especially those with insurance coverage. In addition, females spend more than males generally, and the male minority groups have higher treatment effect values, compared to that White female usually spends a lot on medical expenditure. From a racial disparity perspective, we observe that the male Hispanic group QTE …

Strengthening The Southern Nevada Workforce Pipeline, Katie M. Gilbertson

Policy Briefs and Reports

This report analyzes the Southern Nevada employment ecosystem by utilizing occupational clusters recognized by the U.S. Department of Labor. The first section examines occupations in the tourism industry using three occupational clusters: hospitality and leisure; arts, audio/video technology and communications; and the transportation, distribution, and logistics. Next, this report utilizes the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance’s 2022 Workforce Blueprint to identify the top 15 in-demand occupations for Southern Nevada and occupational clusters. A case study of the MGM College Opportunity Program (COP) is presented to demonstrate an existing workforce training program that promotes upward mobility of leisure and hospitality employees …

Death On The Job: Mountain West States, 2022, Miguel A. Soriano Ralston, Joshua Padilla, Saha Salahi, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Economic Development & Workforce

This fact sheet examines select data from the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) 2022 report, “Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect,” which reports on worker safety, health, and workplace fatalities. The original report provides a comprehensive national and state-by-state profile of workplace conditions in the United States. These data were originally reported to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This fact sheet highlights workforce fatalities and injuries in the Mountain West region (Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah).

Three Essays In Behavioral Economics, Foteini Tzachrista

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes three essays on behavioral economics with applications in health, strategic thinking, and labor.In the first essay titled ``The Effect of Nudging on the Utilization of Counseling Services and the Implications on College Student Involvement'', I examine the effect of nudging on the utilization of mental health services and the impact on college student involvement. To improve the utilization of mental health services for college students I designed and implemented an intervention promoting a pro-counseling social norm on campus. More specifically I sent campus-wide emails to inform students of the mental health services offered on campus. Randomly selected …

Cotton: A Historiographical And Instructional Exploration: 1835-2020, Chad Joseph Rosenbloom

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I.Synthesis Essay……………………………...2

II.Primary Documents and Headnotes……...36

III.Textbook Critique…………………………...45

IV.New Textbook Entry………………………..49

V.Bibliography………………………………….53

Signals From On High And The Power Of Growth Mindset: A Natural Field Experiment In Attracting Minorities To High-Profile Position, Jeffrey A. Flory, Andreas Leibbrandt, Christina Rott, Olga B. Stoddard

Faculty Publications

We conduct a large-scale natural field experiment with a Fortune 500 company to test several approaches to attract minorities to high-profile positions. 5,000 prospective applicants were randomized into treatments varying a portion of recruiting materials. We find that self-selection at two early-career stages exhibits a substantial race gap. Importantly, we show that this gap can be strongly influenced by several treatments, with some increasing application rates by minorities by 40 percent and others being particularly effective for minority women. The heterogeneities we find by gender, race, and career stage shed light on the underlying drivers of self-selection barriers among minorities.

Database Formation Of Labor Profiles In Upskilling And Reskilling Programs To Prepare The Philippine Labor Force For The 4ir, Breanna Michaela S. Alaras, Malakai Rei F. Feliciano, Salian Idhanth, Abijah Kathryn B. Sta Ana

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

The policy focuses on data management of opportunities for upskilling/reskilling and the profile management of individual laborers’ professional information to effectively integrate the influence of technology on day-to-day life (Schwab, 2016). Laborers that register onto the platform will be matched with programs that can help them meet demands that emerged due to the evolution of their job description. The registration is done to make workers capable of integrating new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) into their workflow. Reskilling and upskilling can evolve operators of the past into “smart operators” that can work with augmented reality, virtual reality, and …

Budgetary Obstacles To Police Reform: The Case Of San Francisco, Hayden Anderson

Master's Projects and Capstones

In response to the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement issued a statement calling on cities to Defund the Police. The event sparked a nationwide reckoning that has reshaped the narratives and strategies for remedying the racial bias and police brutality apparent in the criminal justice system. The shift in police reform efforts embraces notions guiding police budgeting decisions. Today's advocates are transforming their approach to police reform to include budgeting decisions by promoting a municipal practice known as police budget reform. This Capstone explores the feasibility of successful police budget reform under current …

The Impact Of Covid 19 On The Selected Turkish Financial Indicators: Empirical Evidence From Toda Yamamoto Causality Test, Sabri Burak Arzova, Bertaç Şakir Şahin

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

Humanity has suffered from COVID 19 since December 2019. A global pandemic was declared by World Health Organization on 11 March 2021 (WHO, 2019). Pandemics such as bleeding fever, cholera, SARS, MERS, and swine flu have affected humanity throughout history. During pandemic periods, the measures, panic, decline in labor power, and consumption cause economic crises. Like other pandemics, COVID 19 has negative effects on countries, businesses, and households economically (Eichenbaum, Rebelo, and Trabandt, 2020: 1). Many studies have found a statistically significant relationship between public health variables (life expectancy, maternal mortality, etc.) and the economy (Bloom and Sachs, 1998; Robalino …

The Digital Revolution Revisited: Artificial Intelligence & Employment, Nicholas Lavy

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a quickly advancing technology that has the potential to displace a great deal of workers. Unlike past automation-based technologies, I find that high skilled labor is more impacted by AI than lower skilled labor. In order to analyze the impact that AI will have on the labor market, I utilize a fixed effects model for a historical case of automation’s impact on employment and a fitted parameter methodology to analyze the careers most and least exposed to artificial intelligence. My results suggest that an increase in exposure to automation technologies by one percentile leads to a …

Covid-19 Pandemic And Nepal: Issues And Perspectives, Basu Sharma, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

Asta-Ja USA and Asta-Ja RDC published the book “Issues and Perspective on the Covid-19 and Nepal” in December 2020. Edited by Basu Sharma and Ambika P. Adhikari, the book contains 12 papers by 17 authors. The 173-page book is a part of Asta-Ja’s Occasional Paper Series and addresses some of the key impacts of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic in Nepal, and proposes some policy recommendations to mitigate those impacts. The book covers the areas of how agriculture, food production, employment, urban planning, economy, public health and research activities are impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors review the pandemic’s impact …

The Economics Of Artificial Intelligence: A Primer For Social Studies Educators, Scott Wolla

The Councilor: A National Journal of the Social Studies

This paper provides a framework for understanding the economic effects of automation and artificial intelligence (AI). First, it reviews how physical capital interacts with labor in the context of automation and AI. Next, it discusses recent advances in AI and potential economic outcomes such as job market polarization and income inequality. It then describes the role education has played in previous economic transitions and the role it will likely play as technology advances. Finally, the paper identifies key economic concepts and teaching resources that social studies educators can integrate into their instruction to help students understand the economic effects of …